Sunday, July 15, 2012

ROSE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE (photo) & ON ICE (tanka dream series) by Roswila

ON ICE

my brother enters
the doorway and stands stock still
limned by back light
he holds a huge block of ice
firmly against his chest

even as I dream,
possible meanings for this
image start rising:
freezing his wild emotions?
showing me the way to do so?

a childhood memory
enters the dream: a wooden thunk
as the ice man
drops a block on our porch
for the kitchen ice box

I wake thinking of
the “The Iceman Cometh”*
and of changes
denied, as the world constantly
melts away around us

[four tanka on a dream of 7-14-12. *The reference at the end to Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” may be unsatisfying for anyone not familiar with the play. I find this sometimes when a poet quotes lines in another language with no translation, and context isn't clear enough to make the foreign language lines work for me. However, I’m leaving this reference in as just the title itself really fits the dream/ku. By the way, I did see this play many, many years ago, and was totally gripped and deeply disturbed by it. Click here to read a Wikipedia plot summary of the play. Photo “Rose of the Impossible” by Roswila]

BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DREAMKU (& PHOTOS): The dream-based poems posted on this blog -- dreamku, tanka, two-liners, and monoku -- are offered in the spirit of collaboration. I have done my part. Now it’s your turn to jump in and see what comes up for you. I.e., there is no right or wrong way to understand or interpret any of these dream offerings. Even my own understandings of them change over time. And it gives me joy when a reader sees something in any of them that I have not.

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About Me

Retired, I'm grateful to indulge in daily blogging, taking digital photos, writing poetry every day, and other creative efforts as the spirit grabs me. I also enjoy reading my poems and sometimes improvising on one of the musical instruments in my collection (e.g. didjeridu or kalimba), in our retirement community's regular Talent Shows. And I also occasionally play a role in one of
our radio plays, written by a resident,
and read on stage as if an actual radio show.

"Ganesh dances joyfully,
each step out of now into now again;
each footprint filling to overflowing with kindness.
Remover of Obstacles, clear me out of my own way;
teach me how to dance lightly through life,
how to spill over with love." -- prayer by Roswila

"The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else." -- e.e. cummings (poet & painter)

"There's a thin line between dreaming and waking... The line is not hard and fast. It's more like passing through a waterfall. Really it's just a two sided organic system; on the surface individual blades of grass, underneath it's an intertwined mass of roots we can barely comprehend." -- As explained on the T.V. series FALLING WATER

"You're only paranoid if you're wrong." -- quoted in a play by Steven Dietz

"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." -- Pema Chodron

"The past is not dead, it is not even past." -- William Faulkner

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." -- Twyla Tharp (dancer/choreographer)

"Wisdom begins in wonder." -- Socrates

"Before the light which all things give off dies in the heart it must be expressed." -- Basho (haiku Master)

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.” -- Alfred Adler

"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert" -- attributed to Arthur C. Clarke (author)

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman (physicist)